Things aren’t looking good for Erica Kravid.
Heroes Reborn is back after its winter hiatus, and it didn’t waste long throwing viewers back into the mix. Time is running out for Earth in the past as Erica’s plan falls apart, and both sides are making big moves to come out on top — and alive.
Full spoilers for Heroes Reborn episode 11, “Send in the Clones,” continue below.
The character of Erica Kravid has been Heroes Reborn’s biggest enigma all season long; she’s a bad character with a chip on her shoulder against Evos, but she also does seem to be doing what she think is best for the human race. That duality to her character came to the forefront this week as she showed Tommy how he is key to saving her choice, lucky humans, while Micah showed the world how the head of Renautas manipulated the anti-Evo sentiment from the start.
Of everything that happened in this week’s episode — and there was a lot of moving metaphoric chess pieces into place — the Erica of it all was the strongest. The mystery of personality is always something fun to play with, and Rya Kihlstedt is doing a great job balancing Erica’s more villainous elements with the fact that she has a goal the audience can empathize with — just like Jack Coleman did with HRG back in the early Heroes days.
Beyond her, the rest of the episode was spent moving the plot pieces into place in anticipation of those solar flares heading to Earth and destroying life as we know it. Carlos and Farah saved Micah and the rest of the Evos to allow Micah to get out his message; the Miko projection killed Harris Prime before she disappeared from our reality, causing Quentin and Phoebe to lose their protector and be captured by Luke and Malina; Matt captured Taylor to use her as leverage against Erica and make sure he gets sent to the future to live to see another week; and Erica recruited Joanne to take out Malina and Luke. (Aside: I have a soft spot for Greg Grunberg, but his turn as Evil Matt is one of the more campy elements of this season, particularly his delivery of the Taylor-is-pregnant revelation.)
We want to hear it.
Heroes Reborn likely wasn’t filmed with the knowledge there would be this lengthy hiatus in between episodes 10 and 11, so it’s hard to fault it for the way that break destroyed the momentum the show was building up until it went off the air for a month and a half. Still, it’s a shame that this episode wasn’t a bit… more. There were some cool moments, particularly with Miko’s murder of Harris and the Mohinder revelation, but overall it felt like the bulk of the episode was just set up for the end (which makes sense, because that’s exactly what it’s doing). It wasn’t an explosive new episode to justify the wait, and probably was more harm than help to Heroes Reborn’s overall reception as that loss of momentum may have caused some viewers’ interest to wane.
It will be interesting to see how this season ties together. I honestly could see them just sending everyone to the future and doing crazy stuff from there instead of being able to prevent the solar flares from destroying past Earth, but if they go that route there’s a very unlikely chance they’re going to be able to pull off a relatable Heroes Reborn: Season 2. This show started clicking for me when it went off the deep end, and I’m all for it doing that in the end. Only two more weeks to find out.
As the pieces move into place for Heroes Reborn’s season finale, “Send in the Clones” felt a bit too much like set up — especially since the show has been off the air for so long. Erica Kravid proved to be a standout, as well as the confrontation between Miko and Harris, but much of the episode simply amped up anticipation for the end.
